The other night the thermostat in the hotel room said 'for heating only'. It was bloody hot in my room so I went to try and turn it off. It had a plain brown switch which was part way between a push switch (like you find on English light switches) and a flick switch (like you find on American light switches.) There was a 'I' at the top and a 'O' at the bottom. The trouble was you couldn't tell which way was on and which was off. Is it the bit that's sticking out that you should pay attention to (as if you flicked it into place) or the bit that's been pushed in? In the end I gave up and just turned the temperature knob all the way down.
That was a case of bad design or under-design. By no means was this thing meant to look cool or futuristic. The featured picture, on the other hand, is one of over-design.
What might you expect to find in a dressing room? Maybe a mirror framed with lightbulbs and bunches of flowers? Not likely. Perhaps some random slices of cold meat and bread too small to accommodate it? As a frequent user of 'dressing rooms' I can tell you that number one on the request list is somewhere to hang your dress (if you're Eddie Izzard) or pants (if you're a northener).
You'd be surprised at the number of dressing rooms we come across with nowhere to hang anything. I'm sad to say that it's always a pleasant surprise to be greeted by a coat hook or a rail and some hangers. It's merely considered a bonus if the bread is big enough to encapsulate the meat.
It was indeed a nice surprise to find a coat hook at last night's gig. You can imagine how our initial elation turned to despair when we came to appreciate the actual "coat-hanging" qualities of the featured garment holder. Try and hang your coat on one of those bendy arms and it laughs in your face. Sometimes it even waits a few seconds after you've turned your back to throw your belongings to the floor. After a few hours of futile battling with the ODPOS (over designed piece of) we resorted to hanging everything on coat hangers and hooking those on the middle.
So, this thing was over designed because in order to make it look futuristic (silver and curvy) 70% of it's actual function was sacrificed. That's not a good compromise in my opinion. They could still have made it silver and bendy - just bend it the other way.
There is, of course, the possibility that I've somehow missed the point. Perhaps it's designed to discourage pigeons from landing on it and crapping on your shirts. They'd just slide off and land in the pile of coats on the floor.
J
